009:006 After thus speaking, He spat on the ground, and then,
kneading the dust and spittle into clay, He smeared the clay
over the man's eyes and said to him,
009:007 "Go and wash in the pool of Siloam"--the name means `Sent.'
So he went and washed his eyes, and returned able to see.
009:008 His neighbours, therefore, and the other people to whom he had
been a familiar object because he was a beggar, began asking,
"Is not this the man who used to sit and beg?"
009:009 "Yes it is," replied some of them. "No it is not,"
said others, "but he is like him." His own statement was,
"I am the man."
009:010 "How then were your eyes opened?" they asked.
009:011 "He whose name is Jesus," he answered, "made clay and smeared
my eyes with it, and then told me to go to Siloam and wash.
So I went and washed and obtained sight."
009:012 "Where is he?" they inquired, but the man did not know.
009:013 They brought him to the Pharisees--the man who had been blind.
009:014 Now the day on which Jesus made the clay and opened the man's
eyes was the Sabbath.
009:015 So the Pharisees renewed their questioning as to how he had
obtained his sight. "He put clay on my eyes," he replied,
"and I washed, and now I can see."
009:016 This led some of the Pharisees to say, "That man has not come
from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath." "How is it
possible for a bad man to do such miracles?" argued others.
009:017 And there was a division among them. So again they asked the once
blind man, "What is your account of him?--for he opened your eyes."
"He is a Prophet," he replied.
009:018 The Jews, however, did not believe the statement concerning him--
that he had been blind and had obtained his sight--until they
called his parents and asked them,
009:019 "Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How is it then
that he can now see?"
009:020 "We know," replied the parents, "that this is our son and that
he was born blind;
009:021 but how it is that he can now see or who has opened his
eyes we do not know. Ask him himself; he is of full age;
he himself will give his own account of it."
009:022 Such was their answer, because they were afraid of the Jews;
for the Jews had already settled among themselves that if any
one should acknowledge Jesus as the Christ, he should be
excluded from the synagogue.
009:023 That was why his parents said, "He is of full age:
ask him himself."
009:024 A second time therefore they called the man who had been blind,
and said, "Give God the praise: we know that that man
is a sinner."
009:025 "Whether he is a sinner or not, I do not know," he replied;
"one thing I know--that I was once blind and that now I can see."